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Well, actually this one is more about getting juicy one way backlinks than direct traffic, although that will happen as too. Going back to the age old concept of giving a little to get a lot, this tip is an excellent way to build long term natural backlinks and traffic to your site while giving away useful stuff that people really want.

As more and more people discover the joys of blogging, there is a seemingly insatiable demand for blog templates. It’s not just people who need templates for a new blog, many long time bloggers regularly update the look of their site as well.

So, here are the makings of a win-win situation. We need backlinks, they need blog themes. If you are crafty, you can make some nice looking Wordpress themes and give them away for free, with a small sponsor credit link (with keywords as anchor) back to our target site.

If you aren’t so handy, it’s not terribly expensive to have wordpress themes developed for this purpose. Heck, it’s a lot cheaper than buying backlinks.

As for the actual giving them away part, this does involve a bit of work. You can start by submitting to the Wordpress theme viewer site. And, then also contact smaller theme directories (a Google search yields plenty). You can also directly contact bloggers who keep up to date lists of WP themes and politely mention that yours is available. Be sure to have a demo, screenshot and download link ready - make it easy for them to add your theme to their blog.

The benefits of this technique are one way backlinks where you control the anchor (tip: have more than 1 version, vary anchor) that grow over time naturally. Also, curiosity clicks that translate to direct traffic. Plus, of course you are giving back to the Internet community - now, doesn’t that give you warm fuzzies?

I wanted to tell you about AdGridwork.com, a new “Web 2.0″ ish text link exchange. I had tested this out on some of my sites last week and as far as text link exchanges go, this one shows some promise.

You can check it out here: http://www.AdGridwork.com and no, thats not an affiliate link

What I really like about AGW is the interface and the ability to run multiple sites and campaigns right from the same account. You can even have different ads for different pages. It’s easy to use and compatiable with Adsense, so no worries there.

You can see I added it to this blog, look in the lower right.

It seems to be fairly new, but there is some decent volume there. I have gotten some traffic on the sites I tested, but nothing spectacular. I really have a good feeling about this one however and I’ll be interested to see what happens as they grow. Like I said, it’s nicely done and has real promise. It’s worth a look see if you like to try out new stuff

When most people think of Private Label Rights, they think of articles to use in their websites.  Articles are great and content does equal traffic, but there is another cool way to use PLR to drive traffic to your site.

If you arent familiar with the concept of PLR, here is the 2 second explination… You know how most people hate to write?  Well, PLR solves that.  You can buy PLR articles, ebooks, etc… that you can slap your name on and call your own.  You don’t have to write a word or credit anyone - it’s as if you wrote it.  You can repackage them, slice and dice them and use the content any way you choose.  Neat, huh?

There are tons of PLR sites out there with a variety of content on many niches.  Here are a couple to get you started…

Automatic Niche Profits

Niche Content Elite

Well, private label articles don’t only make great content for websites, they also make great content for free ebooks.  Take a PLR article pack and add links to your website and affiliate products.  Use one of the many free PDF conversion softwares out there to turn it into a PDF file.  And, give that puppy away.

Give it away to as many people as you can.  Give it away with resell rights and other people will give it away for you.  To be most effective, you will need to write a short sales letter to go with it.

The idea is to make your free ebook go “viral”. If enough people see and share your ebook, you will have a ton of free traffic for years to come, not to mention comissions from the affiliate links you included in the book.

Once you do it once, do it again and again.  Let the viral nature of free ebooks promote your site for you.  It’s a great residual traffic technique that you will swear by once you give it a try.

The other day I was on a general forum (not a marketing one) and someone had asked the question “How do I get more traffic to my website?”

Some girl had already responded to this post with the most absurd advice I think I have ever seen given to that question.  She said that you should hire a particular SEO firm to wite articles for you at $1000 / each.  She then went on to “warn” this poster that they shouldn’t try to do anything get traffic themselves or else they would mess up their ranking permantly.

Excuse me, Say what?

Well, I responded first by debunking the concept that you must hire out to get traffic.  Second, I said that if you’d have to be crazy to pay $1000 to have an article written.  Unless of course, you are a billionare in which case - sure, share the wealth.  Then, of course I listed about a dozen free ways to get traffic as well as pointing out that traffic and SEO aren’t the same thing.

Well, the story goes on because this little whatever she is decided to come back and argue with me that I didn’t know what I was talking about and that you can’t get traffic without at least $5000 monthly budget for SEO (not even PPC!).  LOL!  So I posted my stats.  14,987 visitors in one month (the 1st month!) - not a penny spent.  8971 Visitors on another site - one month, not a penny spent.  I haven’t heard back from this dimwit yet.  Mabye she’s having her head examined.

The reason I’m telling you this is because it occured to me that there are people like this girl out there who want to rip you off and rob you blind.  That really makes my blood boil because that is how SEO’s and marketers get a bad name.  People fall for this stuff and of course wind up on the loosing end when they are spending a small fortune and have little or nothing to show for it.

So, moral of the story is that if you cross paths with this scammer or one of her cronies don’t fall for it.  If you are creative and take the time to work some of the free and dirt cheap traffic techniques, you will have more traffic than you would have even if you spent thousands.

I run a newsletter that you can subscribe to (free again!) that will show you how to get all the traffic you could possibly want for little or no money at all.  You can subscribe Here.